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What are the world's best speakers to bring the philharmonic into your living room?

This you have in concert halls like Musikverein (Vienna), Tonhalle Zurich, Basel, in many opera houses but not necessarily in the Barbicans or especially in the KKL (Luzern). The sound is quite different with other characteristics.

I don't think that you need really big speakers to reproduce the "rumble-echo". The quality of the low frequencies must be very high otherwise this "noise" will not be recognized as part of the music but as disturbing noise which will hide the sound of many instruments. In concert halls even if there is this "rumble-echo" you can still hear most of the instruments well. With lots of hifi the effect was, let me say it in nice words, not acceptable. I believe the room acoustics have also a big importance but of course if garbage comes out of the system you cannot correct that with room acoustics. I believe that is one of the reasons most people are positively impressed about the sound at my place. But again it is not a question of buying something and connecting it together in 10 minutes, neither in one year. And again it is also a question of personal taste which for me meant to go to lots of rehearsals and analyze the sound there and compare it with what I had. Being critical about the sound at your own place is also a major factor that contributes to achieve your goals. And to be critical also means to accept critics from other people.
 
APs are good but appear to depreciate very heavily. They work best with a particular speaker placement but are still fine in more conventional placements. They like a bit of juice to give their best, and they are very even-handed. I have owned Virgo mkIII and Avanti mkIII, and they have been amongst the best speakers I have tried. One drawback is that due to their typical cabinet design, they don't have as much sheer bass weight as some larger speakers (e.g my ATCs) but what they do have is a tremendously agile, dynamic and detailed sound which mates best with valves.
 
Better to go and see a live performance if the atmosphere is all that you are looking for, it's all utterly pointless swapping boxes and overpriced speakers when you take account of recording limitations and acoustics of the listening location.
 
In a blind test if you had to choose a loudspeaker that could reproduce the most realistic intonation of the human voice chances are you would choose a 30 years old BBC design. The rest is just frequency extension and dynamics.
 
TLS said:
In a blind test if you had to choose a loudspeaker that could reproduce the most realistic intonation of the human voice chances are you would choose a 30 years old BBC design. The rest is just frequency extension and dynamics.
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This is the reason, why i am using Spendor. IMHO Spendor "classics" have the best voice reproduction.
 
TLS said:
In a blind test if you had to choose a loudspeaker that could reproduce the most realistic intonation of the human voice chances are you would choose a 30 years old BBC design. The rest is just frequency extension and dynamics.
Click to expand...
Although the likes of LS 3/5a (that I used to own) and Quad ESL57 (that I still do) reproduce the human voice superbly, they do tend to have a "BBC" character to them which is very familiar, but its not entirely accurate. It certainly doesn't sound like the real person in the room with me. I have a friend who appeared on TV a few times, and playing the tapes via my Quads didn't really sound like he does in my room, as they added a richness to his voice that simply isn't there. My Martin Logan Summits are more neutral, and from an adjacent room, you'd find it difficult to identify which was him talking and which was him on TV. Oddly enough the recordings are straight from the desk, but are far from good quality in a hifi sense, but the vocals are superb.
 
Hi,

My ESL57 made me run into the lounge to see who was talking in there, turned out to be the radio, I should have never sold them, hope you are looking after them Jem.

Pete
 
Pete MB&D said:
Hi,

My ESL57 made me run into the lounge to see who was talking in there, turned out to be the radio, I should have never sold them, hope you are looking after them Jem.

Pete
Click to expand...

I agree, you shouldn't have! (but glad you did!) Even though I now use Summits in the main system, the Quads are in fine fettle, Just replaced the sockets and added some OTA stands over the years, but they have been 100% reliable, still sound superb and look really good either side of the TV in the barn.

The Summits cost ten times more and are only 20% better.

What are you using now?
 
To gone the symphony experience requires a big expensive speaker. Best I've heard are big MBLs which have the advantage of being omni's and radiate sound in the same way real instruments do. With the right amps they do scale and power like nothing else.

Second best I've heard are big active PMC's

Neither are cheap
 
An interesting but old thread which was liked to elsewhere on the web.
In my view from a loudspeaker designer's perspective; so where to start with an answer? A balanced combination of the following properties gets you closer to the ideal, high sensitivity, an easy amplifier load, wide bandwidth and a wide dynamic range. The resulting device will inevitably be large. So to compromise produce a design which is scalable to suit the room it is to be used in.
 
To OP if you want to flush out the particular live performance rather the characterestics of the speaker then active ATC is a good place to start...
 
Put the question a slightly different way ... what speakers could convincingly reproduce the sound of a grand piano in your living room? Certainly not ESL57s (which I’ve had, and enjoyed), or any of the BBC LS3/5A types. The larger active ATCs get closer than most.
 
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